The evening, curated by the performance artist Marina Abramovic, started with guests being asked to put on a white lab coat before sitting down to dinner; each table, meanwhile, had a live, rotating human head for a centerpiece, with the attached performance artists sitting beneath. Diners were given a list of rules about interacting with the centerpiece, such as, "The centerpiece will observe you. You may observe the centerpiece." and "No touching, feeding, offering drink, or disrespecting the centerpiece."

Debbie Harry was shortly thereafter carried onstage to serenade the crowd with “One Way or Another” and “Heart of Glass.” Postperformance, two life-size nude cakes of Harry and Abramovic were brought out. With a machete, Harry removed her cake's red velvet heart, and then teams of shirtless men descended on the two cakes with meat cleavers, sending toes, breasts, and other various anatomical parts to the different tables on dessert plates.